Falling
by SkylarRocaineDaughterofHermes
Summary: The many stages of their relationship involved a lot of falling. Others falling from fights, people falling in battle, and them falling in love. Kayla/Mark!


**Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or HoO**

Their relationship had many stages. Here were a few, starting from the very beginning.

_Stage One: enemies, enemies, and enemies_

Kayla walked into the arena, looking for someone. She saw Mark punching his brother jokingly as they took a break from fighting.

Clenching her fists, she walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around, and upon seeing her, asked, "Can I help you?" in a monotone voice.

Kayla rolled her eyes. "Um, yes actually, you can. You can stop causing black eyes, or breaking peoples' arms. That way I might actually be able to get a break for once instead of spending all of my free time healing your victims."

Mark was a son of Ares, and Kayla knew it was in his nature to be violent, but there was a line. And he had majorly overstepped it. Every single waking moment of Kayla's life was now spent in the infirmary, and she was getting sick of it.

"You're a healer, aren't you? That's what you do: heal," he replied, no ounce of emotion in his voice. If anything, it sounded accusing.

"Yeah, but not all the time! Contrary to what you might think, I _do_ have a life," Kayla scoffed. He needed a serious attitude check.

Mark rolled his eyes. "At this place? If you think fighting monsters and speaking ancient Greek qualifies as having a life, go for it. And why don't you stop complaining for once? Nobody wants to hear it. I mean, seriously."

"Well, you would too, if you were me. And you know what nobody wants? They don't want to be looking over their shoulder and sleeping with one eye open in case you go off on one of your maiming sprees," Kayla replied, looking at him disdainfully.

"Coming from you, it doesn't mean much. You're nothing but a sweet little goody two shoes," he said, as if it disgusted him and insulted his very being.

"Yeah, and you're nothing but a bully," she sneered back in the same manner, before turning and walking away.

_Stage Two: neutral-ish, protective, maybe possibly friends_

The Titan War. It had to be the scariest experience Kayla had ever gone through.

To add sprinkles to the sundae, their ambrosia supply was down to half what they started with. They hadn't started with that much either, since Mark's victims had used it all.

After Kayla had confronted Mark that one day, the number of attacks had gotten much lower, although not stopping completely. Thank the gods either way, there would have been _no_ ambrosia left if he hadn't stopped.

The cherry on top was the fact that the Ares cabin had gone on strike. Just because their cabin had an argument with her siblings over something, they had decided they wouldn't fight in the war.

Kayla clenched her teeth. She knew that the Ares cabin had a tendency to be overdramatic at times, but this? This was just pushing it, on all levels. Due to this as well, the number of trained fighters was way lower than the camp would've liked, forcing Kayla and some of the other healers to go in place of the Ares cabin.

There had been warnings of an upcoming drakon attack, but when Kayla actually saw it, she had half a mind to go hide in the Underworld. She and a few other campers watched from a few blocks away as the drakon wrapped itself around the top of one of the huge buildings in Manhatten.

"Crap!" someone yelled from next to her. Before Kayla was even able to turn around, she felt a sword cut into her side, deep.

She screamed as it was pulled out, clutching her side. She turned to find a hoard of dracanae. The one closest to her was holding a sword, drenched with blood, her blood. The dracanae was smirking, and Kayla so wanted to wipe it off her face, but she wasn't in the right condition whatsoever.

It swiped the sword at her again, slicing her collarbone. She winced and touched it with her fingertips, pulling back to find more blood. She clenched her hand around the hilt of her sword, getting ready to try to block the next attack.

As the dracanae was about to swing at her again, a strong hand wrapped around her waist, avoiding her cut, and pulled her back, the person stepping in front of her as they did so. "Stay back," a male voice said.

Kayla was too shocked to reply. The voice came from _Mark_.

Her vision began to get blurry as she watched Mark fight with the dracanae. Feeling dizzy, she fell to the ground and closed her eyes, unable to say a word before blacking out.

When Kayla woke up, the first thing she registered was that she was in a comfortable bed, like in a hotel. The second thing she registered were the voices around her, yelling.

"We've done all we can! Now it's up to the Fates!" Will said, trying to stay calm. Anyone could see that he was getting pretty pissed off. At this point, there was only one person who could calm him down, and she was off raiding some pharmacy with the Stolls.

Mark was the next one to speak. "Then why isn't she waking up. She lost a hell of a lot of blood, how can you be sure she's alright?" he growled. Speaking from experience, Kayla knew that if Mark wasn't satisfied, he would probably punch through a wall or something.

Her half sister, Hannah, looked at her. "Why don't you ask her yourself?" she asked the fighting boys. Their head snapped in her direction, and Mark walked up to her. Hannah left a cup of nectar and a plate of ambrosia next to her bed, and walked out with Will, who was muttering something about incompetent Ares children.

"Are you ok?" Mark asked, brushing some hair out of Kayla's face.

"I think so," she responded, with a hoarse voice. She could feel her cheeks burning up, and she knew she was blushing. Clearing her throat, she asked, "What happened?"

"The dracanae. Your cut was deeper than it had seemed, and you fainted. I carried you here, and… yeah," he said, trailing off at the end, unsure of what to say without making things any more awkward.

She smiled slightly. "Thanks." Kayla was grateful for his help, but she was wondering why he had gone through so much trouble to do so.

Mark was wondering the same thing. He didn't know what it was, but there was something about this girl that made him go crazy. Hopefully he'd figure it out soon, before he did something that might scare her off forever.

_Stage Three: why don't you take a guess with this one_

Kayla tossed and turned in her bed, unable to sleep. She threw the covers off and looked at the clock on her nightstand. It was 11:30. Quickly throwing her hair out of the ponytail it was in, she walked out of the cabin silently, deciding to head to the beach.

As she got closer, she made out a familiar looking figure sitting on the sand. She slowed down apprehensively, but decided against leaving and walked ahead.

Sitting down next to him, she said, "Hey." He looked over at her and nodded, but remained silent. "So… insomnia?"

He sighed, knowing she wasn't going to give up. He had insomnia, but only because there was too much on his mind. And Kayla was number one. "Yeah, I guess." He waved his hand in a forget-about-it manner towards her.

Her eyes widened. "Your hand!" she exclaimed, looking at the gash he'd gotten that afternoon. It seemed to be deep. "What happened? Does it hurt?"

"Nothing. I was just distracted while sword fighting with Clarisse," he shrugged. Kayla took his hand in hers and examined it. He pulled it away, and refused to meet her eyes. It was _her_ that had been distracting him.

"Mark," she said, giving him a don't-be-so-stupid look. "Let me heal it. It might get infected or something."

"No, it's fine, it doesn't hurt." Mark protested, not giving in to her.

"Mark." Kayla tried again.

Mark continued to talk, ignoring her. "Really, it's one stupid cut. I'm a son of Ares, this kind of stuff happens all the-"

"Mark!" she said louder, but still softly. He stopped talking and sighed in defeat. This was one stubborn daughter of Apollo. Holding her hand above his, she whispered a few words under her breath and a glow appeared, radiating from her palm. Mark could feel the pain decreasing.

The glow disappeared and he looked at his hand to find it was completely healed. "Thanks," he murmured, glancing up to see her eyes trained on him.

"No problem," she said back, her voice barely above a whisper.

He stared into her sky blue eyes for a few more moments, before starting to lean forward. Kayla didn't move, as thoughts swirled around her head. Mark could be incredibly sweet and protective sometimes, and he'd gotten her falling for him for a while now, but he could also be mean, and violent, and cruel. She shouldn't have been where she was at the moment.

But as his lips met hers, all coherent thought flew out of her mind and she wrapped her arms around his neck, playing with his hair. He took her face into his hands and kissed her softly.

When they pulled away from each other, he rested his forehead on hers, still staring into her eyes. The corners of his mouth curved up into a small smile, as did hers. They stayed like that for who knows how long, before walking back to their separate cabins, hand in hand.

Kayla and Mark were made for each other, although neither one of them knew it at the time. They had a love hate relationship. They depended on each other. They were the cutest thing since Tratie.

And they're falling more and more in love every day.

**AN: It's been a while, but I just thought this up and had to write it. Hope you liked it! I don't think I'm going to continue the ILYs as a series, but just as a bunch of random one shots. I'm also going to be cleaning up those one shots soon, so be on the lookout!**

**~Skylar**


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